Women in Business Toolkit: Unconscious bias training

THE WOMEN IN BUSINESS TOOLKIT: Unconscious Bias Training

THE WOMEN IN BUSINESS TOOLKIT All of the Chapters so the Women in Business Toolkit can be found online on the Women in Business Toolkit section of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Website along with an online version of this document.

Click the links below or see www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit for more information.

Having a family and caring for dependents

Promoting Best Practice Mentoring and Sponsorship

Maternity Leave and Pay

Unconscious Bias Training

Paternity Leave and Pay

Transparency in Pay and Promotions

Adoption Leave and Pay Shared Parental Leave and Pay The Right to Request Flexible Working

Promoting Diversity Through Recruitment Flexible Working

Statutory Parental Leave

Diversity Policies and Strategies

Your Rights in the Workplace

Making the Case

Discrimination, Informal and Formal Grievances and The Equality Act (2010)

Making the Case: How to Construct a Business Case and Useful Statistics

Taking a Case to Employment Tribunal

INTRODUCTION: This handy little guide offers you some concise and, we hope, highly practical and useful information on Unconscious Bias Training.

If you like the sound of Unconscious Bias Training check out the ‘Making the Case’ chapter of the Women in Business Toolkit for lots of helpful advice and statistics to help you make the case to your employer. For more information click on the link on the left-hand page or go to the Women in Business Section of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce website: www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit

Connecting you to opportunity...

This guide, brought to you by the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, is part of the Women in Business Toolkit. This toolkit aims to help inform and empower women and encourage best practice in businesses, helping make the UK a forward thinking, attractive place to work.

Whilst useful and informative, it does not aim to provide encyclopaedic knowledge or in-depth legal advice about the topics in question, merely an introductory account. If you have any questions about any of the topics covered in this document please do speak to your HR department/the member of staff responsible for this area or seek professional advice.

The Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce features some of the UK’s oldest and largest Chambers. It has nearly 3,000 member companies that employ over 200,000 plus affiliate organisations representing 15,000 people. It offers extensive services to industry and commerce, having served the interests of business for nearly three centuries, promoting trade locally, nationally and internationally.

A 2009 DWP study found that when sending fake CVs with identical qualifications and experiences the candidate with the white British sounding name had to send...

BEFORE RECEIVING A POSITIVE RESPONSE FROM AN EMPLOYER ...where the candidates with ethnic minority names had to send and average of FOR THE SAME RESPONSE. Over their lifetime, the average female executive will earn

LESS than a male counterpart following an identical career path In 2012 CMI found that male managers were awarded bonuses

as their female counterparts

In 2012 Policy Exchange sent out 1000 identical CVs for bar and personal assistant jobs. Half claimed to be from 25year olds, half 51 years olds‌ ...the 25 year olds were

TIMES AS LIKELEY to receive a response Women earn...

AN HOUR LESS ON AVERAGE than men

WHAT IS UNCONSCIOUS BIAS? Everyone has unconscious biases. These biases are our natural people preferences. People are naturally hard-wired to like people who are like them, who they have ‘things in common’ with. They also naturally associate certain roles, behaviours or other characteristics with certain stereotypes. These can be strong, negative stereotypes or subtler responses e.g. seeing a new mother and assuming she is uninterested in promotion and extra responsibility at work. Amongst psychologists the three big biases present in the workplace are known as affinity bias, social comparison bias and confirmatory bias.

These prejudices and preferences can be about anything from race and gender to previous job experience or management style. Often those holding these biases are not even fully aware of it themselves. Because of the unconscious nature of these biases they can often trump our rational, logical thoughts and reactions without us even realising that we have these biases in the first place.

Unconscious biases can impact on all areas of organisational performance including in:    

Candidates selected for interview and/or promotion.

Attributing different pay levels to those doing the same job.

Offering more stretching/important work to one member of staff over another.

Offering additional support or informal mentoring to one member of staff and not another.

Having individuals from diverse backgrounds with different styles and strengths succeed at all levels can have a significant positive impact on businesses. As a result, it is important to identify and tackle unconscious biases. If you feel your organisation would benefit from understanding and challenging unconscious bias you may want to ask them to provide unconscious bias training.

WHAT IS UNCONSICOUS BIAS TRAINING? Unconscious Bias Training (sometimes called ‘Hidden Bias’ Training) covers a wide variety of activities. These can include: 

Workshops



Short courses



Online courses

These courses or workshops are usually offered by a qualified provider who will either offer a package of training to your organisation specifically or provide an opportunity for your company to send delegates along to a pre-existing event.

These workshops or courses will involve is largely down to the provider in question. However, you are likely to receive an introduction to the concept of unconscious bias, how to recognise it in yourself and/or others and ways you, and your organisation, can tackle it.

Many best practice guides to unconscious bias training also recommend that the ideas and practices need to be embedded in the organisation.

This means that, rather than simply doing some training and moving on, either the provider, or someone in your organisation, will need to keep reminding staff of the ideas and principals. This can be achieved through occasional emails on the subject, messages from department heads or senior members of staff and updates on the progress of any activities aimed at countering unconscious bias as well as other activities aimed at boosting engagement and implementation.

HOW CAN I GET IT? There are numerous companies and consultants that offer unconscious bias training. If you are unsure what provider to go for try looking for reviews online or ask other organisations that already offer unconscious bias training what provider they use.

Employers do not have to offer unconscious bias training. It is a best practice activity rather than a legal requirement. However, many may consider offering unconscious bias training if you can make a good case for why they should.

To begin, have a chat with your line manager or the relevant member of staff about unconscious bias training. They may already offer it or be highly receptive of the idea. If your employer needs some convincing you may want to offer to put together a business case for why they should consider offering unconscious bias training.

A business case is a formal, written document designed to encourage a decision maker to take a particular course of action.

For more information on how to write a business case and some useful statistics, key lines of argument and case studies you can include please click here or see the ‘Making the Case’ Chapter of the Women in Business Toolkit on the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce website www.Birmingham-Chamber.com/WIBToolkit.

CASE STUDY: Unconscious Bias Training

Name: Sandeep Bains Organisation: PwC, Birmingham Job Role: Manager, IT Risk Assurance Experience of Unconscious Bias Training: Elearning, videos, webcast and leadership communications

At PwC we have a programme of voluntary my business unit leader unconscious bias training called strongly encouraged us to Open Mind for all staff. This was participate. For me, the training launched in 2011 to help us improved my awareness about the recognise how our decision existence of unconscious bias and making can be influenced by the impact it can have and deep-held encouraged me to beliefs and “The training improved my do small things stereotypes, differently. For awareness about the and to help us example, I make change our existence of unconscious more of a conscious behaviour. effort to put myself in bias and the impact it can someone else's Open Mind is position before have ” just one part of making any a much broader judgements.

Diversity programme we have looking at how we can make sure It was largely effective in putting there’s a level playing field for all, across an important point that regardless of gender or race, and unconscious bias exists in doing this as quickly as we can. professional and personal environments. It was an interesting Although the training is entirely

and engaging exercise and demonstrated the firm’s movement toward improving diversity levels.

The training included a 20 minute e-learning module which highlighted the business case for diversity and had psychological tests to give an insight into how bias can impact our decisionmaking. There were also a

series of five videos and a webcast from our leadership team.

I found the learning a refreshing change from the routine e-learning training we do for mandatory compliance.

The e-learning and videos did make me reassess some of my behaviours and give greater consideration to the existence and impact of unconscious bias.

About PwC PwC helps organisations and individuals create the value they’re looking for. We’re a network of firms in 157 countries with more than 184,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, tax and advisory services.

Go to: http://pwc.blogs.com/midlands for more information

JARGON BUSTER: AFFINITY BIAS This an emotional bias that causes irrational decisions driven by how people perceive a person or product to be a reflection of their values.

This can lead to people ignoring or disregarding faults and mistakes in those who we like and emphasising them in those we subconsciously dislike.

CONFIRMATORY BIAS A form of bias that causes people to seek out or prioritise information that confirms our existing perceptions.

IMPLICIT/UNCONSCIOUS/HIDDEN BIAS Our implicit people preferences, formed by our socialisation, our experiences, and by our exposure to others’ views about other groups of people.

SOCIAL COMPARISON BIAS This bias refers to the tendency of people to constantly compare ourselves to others in order to create an individual and group identity.

In the workplace this can lead to a preference for promoting from inside a group as opposed to making use of talent outside of it.

USEFUL LINKS: Harvard University: Project Implicit Website https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ Project Implicit is an online test aimed at illustrating your implicit (a.k.a unconscious) biases.

Financial Skills Partnership Guide to Successful and Effective Boards http://www.directions.org.uk/media/cms_file/ Toolkit_for_Corporate_Boards_1.pdf This guide features a wide array of advice on best practice activities including a section on unconscious bias training.

Managing Unconscious Bias at Work: A Study on Staff and Manager Relationships http://www.nhsemployers.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/eneiUnconscious%20Bias%20Research%20October%202012.pdf This piece of research into unconscious bias in the NHS provides lots of useful insights into and information on managing unconscious biases.

NHS Employers: Business Case for Diversity http://www.nhsemployers.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/ Business_case_for_diversity_presentation_fb_51109.pdf This short powerpoint presentation is full of handy facts and key arguments concerning the importance of having a diverse workforce.

A 2009 DWP study found that when sending fake CVs with identical qualifications and experiences the candidate with the white British sounding name had to send...

BEFORE RECEIVING A POSITIVE RESPONSE FROM AN EMPLOYER ...where the candidates with ethnic minority names had to send and average of

In 2012 Policy Exchange sent out 1000 identical CVs for bar and personal assistant jobs. Half claimed to be from 25year olds, half 51 years olds‌ ...the 25 year olds were

TIMES AS LIKELEY

FOR THE SAME RESPONSE. NatCen (2009) A Test for Racial Discrimination in Recruitment Practice in British Cities [Online] [Accessed 09 October 2012]

Over their lifetime, the average female executive will earn

to receive a response Policy Exchange (2013) Too Much to Lose [Online] [Accessed 09 October 2012]

Women earn...

LESS AN HOUR LESS ON than a male counterpart following an identical career path

than men

ExpertHR (2013) National Salary Survey [Online] Accessed 09 October 2013

In 2012 CMI found that male managers were awarded bonuses

as their female counterparts ExpertHR (2012) National Salary Survey [Online] Accessed 09 October 2013

Fawcett Society (2013) Equal Pay [Online] [Accessed 09 October 2013]

THE WOMEN IN BUSINESS TOOLKIT: WE NEED YOU

We want to make sure that the Women in Business Toolkit stays as up to date and relevant as possible. To do this we need your support: Are there any chapters that you think are missing?

Do you have experience of any of the topics included in the toolkit?

Could you offer a case study?

If the answer is yes to any of the above please get in touch using the contact details on the back of this document. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Women in Business Toolkit was Developed in Partnership with:

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